


Not Everything Has to Be a Disaster

by tacosandflowers



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby!Fic, F/M, Future Fic, Post-Canon, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6039256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacosandflowers/pseuds/tacosandflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s almost laughable, really. After five years on the ground, Clarke hadn’t expected it to be easy when things finally shifted into something new between her and Bellamy. But she also hadn’t expected to be thrown the ultimate curveball. </p><p>* </p><p>Bellamy and Clarke face the prospect of being parents a lot sooner than they ever thought they would. Canon divergent after 3x03.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Everything Has to Be a Disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LayALioness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/gifts).



> Happy Valentine's Day to the lovely LayALioness!

_St. John’s Wort, we need more St. John’s Wort._

It’s a relatively uneventful day in Arkadia. Clarke is standing in a small storage room in the medical building, muttering to herself as she does inventory on medicinal plant stores, when Jackson appears in the doorway.

 

“Hey Clarke,” he says, looking slightly nervous. “I ran that blood test for you.”

 

“And?” she asks.

 

Jackson holds out a tablet to her, his lips pressed together. “I screened for everything, and other than the low-grade iron deficiency everyone suffers from, it all looks normal. Except, well. You’ll see.”

 

Clarke takes the tablet and scans the information, and the world around her stops when she gets to the line Jackson is referring to.

 

“No. It’s not possible,” she says.

 

Jackson clears his throat, but wisely says nothing.

 

Clarke’s heart pounds in her chest. “I haven’t had my implant removed.”

 

Jackson remains quiet for a moment before finally speaking up. “We know that implant effectiveness in a few cases hasn’t lasted as long on the ground as it did in space,” Jackson says.

 

“In _two_ cases,” Clarke replies. “The rest are completely functional.”

 

“As far as we know,” Jackson says. “But based on that blood test, yours isn’t.”

 

Clarke looks at the tablet again. _hCG level: 40,371; Pregnancy: positive._ She closes her eyes and lets out a long breath.

 

“Abby hasn’t seen this, has she?” she asks after a moment.

 

“No, I kept it confidential like you asked,” Jackson replies. “If you want to do an ultrasound to confirm the results, we can set one up.”

 

“I need to go,” she says, shoving the tablet back at Jackson. “Don’t show Abby.”

 

“Are you done with the supply count already?”

 

“You just told me I’m pregnant, Jackson,” she snaps. “I need some air. I’ll finish it tomorrow.”

 

She grabs her jacket off the hook and hurries out of medical before her mother can waylay her. Once she’s outside in the open air, she gulps for breath, allowing herself to stop for a moment to let the shock properly course through her body.

_This is not supposed to be happening._

Clarke is aware she’ll need to do an ultrasound to confirm it, but she also _knows_ that the test is right _._ She’s suspected, deep down, for at least a week now, she’s realizing, but has been carefully denying it. At the end of the third day in a row of barely being able to stomach her dinner and then falling dead asleep before nine PM, she had to admit something was off. Hence the blood test she’d had Jackson run this morning, to check for any number of things. Her period was late, but she’d been writing that off to the aforementioned iron deficiency.

 

She feels a terrible urge to cry and knows she needs to get away from Arkadia, where she’s surrounded by people who are not accustomed to seeing Clarke Griffin in tears. She stops briefly by her cabin to grab a bag with some water and food. It’s safer now to venture out into the surrounding woods than it used to be, but she grabs her gun in the event she needs to fend off any wildlife—or sees some game and has a chance to take a shot.

 

Once her bag is packed, she heads for the closest gate where she lets a guard know her destination and that she’ll be back by nightfall. Clarke is grateful that she can get out like this, because she wants to be by herself, and she doesn’t want an escort while she hikes to her destination. She knows Bellamy is out with a guard unit for the day, on a training mission with some warriors from a nearby Trikru village, and she’s grateful for this as well.

 

Because this is Bellamy’s problem too, and she has no idea what to say to him about it.

 

_Fuck._

 

Clarke’s brow furrows as she starts down the trail to rocky overlook a mile from Arkadia. She and Bellamy have only been sleeping together for two months. Eight weeks. Doing the math in her head, based on when she last had her period and the hCG levels on her chart, she figures she’s about six weeks along.

 

It’s almost laughable, really. After five years on the ground, Clarke hadn’t expected it to be easy when things finally shifted into something new between her and Bellamy. But she also hadn’t expected to be thrown the ultimate curveball. They were easing into it, because after years of being best friends and partners in every other way, she wanted to get this right. They both did.

 

And yet within two weeks they’d managed to get themselves—unknowingly at the time—into the most serious shit possible.

 

Clarke appreciates the burning in her muscles as she ascends the hillside, the physical sensations in her body balancing the chaos churning in her mind. She looks briefly at her abdomen a few times, not because she can see or feel anything yet, but because it’s so baffling to her that, according to the blood test, there’s the beginnings of a baby in there. A clump of cells and a tiny flicker of a heartbeat at this point, but still. It’s a lot to take in.

 

Until this, her newfound romantic relationship with Bellamy had been going relatively smoothly, as far as things tended to go for two of them. They’d had a joint leadership arrangement for years that had a strong friendship at its core, and they now served as the two youngest members of the council. Their bond had emerged from the early drop ship days and endured over time, but it hadn’t been easy. Circumstances had pulled them apart as they got caught up in various conflicts throughout their time on Earth, and they’d always ended up together again, but not before they each went to hell and back.

 

They were each other’s constant, in spite of the universe’s attempts to make it otherwise. A large part of their relationship had been forged in the handling of crises, and at times it had felt like all they ever did was manage the dangers to protect their people. But after a peace treaty was brokered between all of the Grounder clans that seemed like it might finally hold, they’d started to spend less and less time managing external dramatics and more time focusing on the well-being of their own community and people’s day-to-day lives. This still meant plenty of work, but it didn't have the tinge of constant danger that their first few years on the ground had.

 

Bellamy is of the attitude that they can now take more time to slow down and appreciate the lives that people are building down here. He's still just as much of a worrier as she is, but he's better at making room for life's little pleasures now that things are calmer. It had been his influence on her in this regard that convinced her she could finally, maybe, be present enough for a real relationship. But even though she’d been willing to take the chance, she’s still scared by it all. She can’t quite fully relax and just be, and she’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to.

 

When she reaches the top of the overlook, the valley opening beneath her, she stretches her muscles and then sits to catch her breath, soaking in the view. It’s mild for a midwinter day, and the solitary space is comforting to her, the way it always has been since she spent those months living mostly alone in the woods during her first year on Earth. She needs the space now to think.

 

A baby. This is _not_ part of the plan. The plan was to let things with Bellamy unfold naturally as they finally gave in and learned how to be with one another like this.

 

Things between them had been building for a while—for years, Clarke knows, now that she’s had time to reflect and admit certain things to herself. Her relationship with Bellamy has always seemed to transcend labels, to be somehow _more_ than any sort of category, but after a while it got to where she couldn’t deny her physical attraction to him any longer. At the end of the day, she’s still a woman with needs, and this year at the winter solstice celebration, she’d finally given in to those needs.

 

She’d felt an excitement in her belly as she got dressed for the party, taking more time than usual with her appearance because she wanted to look pretty, which she’d chastised herself for because this was Bellamy. He’d seen her in every state of messy appearance including bleeding from her eyeballs. But when he’d looked at her, and the expression on his face told her that he had needs too, she was happy she’d worn the soft buckskin dress and let her hair fall around her shoulders.

 

After that, it hadn’t taken much. They’d put in their time socializing with everyone at the party, but their eyes kept straying to each other. When they’d had enough to drink to lower their inhibitions, they’d stepped outside for a moment under the guise of getting a breath of fresh air. Clarke’s still not sure who moved first, but before long they were against the outside wall of the community hall, Bellamy caging her in, and once she leaned up to see what his mouth tasted like it had been game over.

 

There had been some panic the next morning when they’d woken up, naked in Clarke’s bed and nursing Grounder wine hangovers, and the enormity of it all hit them. Because this was no one-night stand. It could never be that between them, and the stakes of a real relationship were terrifyingly high. And it turned out that they, who could talk to each other about anything, were actually pretty shy when it came to discussing these kinds of feelings.

 

They’d managed to agree that they both wanted this, and that they didn’t have to have it all figured out right away, and the panic had subsided. They would take it day by day. Also, there wasn’t much time for talking when they could be devouring each other, because as it turned out, the sex was off the charts. And Clarke knew that once she’d finally starting sleeping with Bellamy, she definitely didn’t want to stop.

 

Hence her current predicament.

 

 _God_ , she thinks, leaning her forehead on her knees. _An implant failure._ She’d seen it happen to two women since they came to the ground. Abby and Jackson had chalked it up to random malfunctions, but Clarke is now the third. Their population isn’t that high. Three is pattern. They’re going to have to recommend that women drink herbal contraceptives to be on the safe side. She should have started drinking the tea after that second implant failure.

 

Too late for that now. Clarke knows she has a choice about what to do, but she’s still in enough shock that she’s not really processing at that level yet. Without limitations on oxygen, people are free to have as many children as they want now, but the panicked reaction to an unplanned pregnancy is still instinctual, thanks to her Ark upbringing. Clarke has always known that she wants to try to have a baby _someday_ , but she’s only twenty-three. All of that is supposed to be years away.

 

Clarke sits for a while and watches a bird soaring on the breeze, a holdout from the winter migration. She wishes she could be lifted onto the air too and feel that weightlessness. But she has things to face. Once the bird flies away and she can no longer see it, she staggers to her feet as another wave of panic washes through her, this time accompanied by a stab of emotion as she thinks about the future. She’s been so wary of thinking too far ahead, preferring instead to live in the present and prepare for the worst. The very idea of this is forcing her to confront the kind of timeframe she never thought she’d have.

 

She has to tell Bellamy. If there’s anything they know how to do, it’s face a crisis head on. But this is more than a crisis. This is a gamechanger. She spends the hike back to Arkadia thinking her way through potential conversations with him. Should she work up her nerve by explaining the circumstances first? Or just come out and say it? She toys briefly with the idea of putting off telling him, but she knows it would eat her up inside, and that the sooner she gets it off her chest, the better.

 

She knows how long a run to the Trikru village takes, and that she probably won’t see Bellamy until after dinner. Great. The time of day when she’s been feeling nauseous and exhausted. He’s been worried about her being sick, and the reason she got the blood test was been that she’d promised him she would let Jackson or Abby check her out. She’s glad she followed her gut and asked Jackson, because she does _not_ want Abby involved in this right now.

 

Arkadia has expanded over the years to accommodate the growing families and the need to utilize more space for food cultivation, and Clarke’s cabin is located in one of the newer sections, in a cluster of cabins near several of her friends. When she gets back, she stops by the mess hall in the central part of the village to grab a tray of food and then heads for her cabin, where she can pick at the food in peace and not get questioning looks from her dinner companions when she doesn’t display her typically more voracious appetite.

 

She manages to get a third of it down before the nausea arrives, and then she takes off her boots and lies down on her bed. She’s heard her mother tell any number of pregnant women that morning sickness doesn’t necessarily happen in the morning, has even repeated it herself when a patient needs to hear it, but that doesn’t stop her annoyance at it. She has yet to actually vomit, but sitting around feeling queasy while her food digests is not necessarily preferable.

 

At this point all she can do is wait. She knows he’ll come and find her, like he always does when they’ve been apart for the day. She dozes for a while as the physical and emotional exhaustion of the afternoon catch up with her, and she’s dreaming of the bird she’d been watching earlier when he shakes her awake. She blinks her eyes open and sees him standing above her in the dim light of the single lantern she’d left burning.

 

“Hey,” she whispers, her heart starting to pound.

 

“Hey,” he says. He sits on the edge of the bed as he reaches his hand out to graze the side of her face. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Not great,” she admits, her voice still husky. She looks into his eyes, deep and dark and searching her own, until she can’t take it anymore. She flicks her gaze away and sits up until her back rests against the pine headboard.

 

Bellamy is looking at her tray of partially eaten food.

 

“You can have the rest,” she tells him. “I got some of it down, I promise.”

 

He looks back at her, concern written in the crease of his brow. “Did you check in with your mom or Jackson?”

 

She nods, swallows. “I had Jackson run a blood test. It’s, um… well, you’re already sitting down, so that’s good. I…” And then she stops, taking a moment to quell the nerves in her stomach before she continues.

 

Bellamy’s face grows more and more alarmed as she struggles to get the words out. “What is it?” he asks, his voice gruff with worry.

 

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it,” she continues, and takes a deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”

 

Bellamy’s entire body falls still, but the range of emotions that cross his face as her words sink in nearly causes Clarke’s heart to explode. In spite of his assumption that he’s a tough guy, Bellamy has one of the most expressive faces she’s ever known. The initial shock manifests in the widening of his eyes and slight drop of his jaw to catch his intake of breath. As the implications of her words set in, the shock melds with the concern from earlier, and then morphs into the last thing she expects to see: a small, baffled smile.

 

“What?” he breathes. “You’re sure?”

 

She nods, and his smile fades as he takes in the seriousness on her own face, and he rapidly approaches the _oh shit_ phase of crisis management.

 

“I’ll have Jackson follow up with an ultrasound tomorrow to confirm it, but a blood test is pretty conclusive when it comes to this kind of thing,” she replies.

 

He shakes his head slightly. “But… how?”

 

“My implant failed,” she replies. “There’s no other explanation. Trust me, this was an accident.”

 

“Holy shit,” Bellamy says as it all continues to sink in. “Holy shit. Clarke.”

 

She sits up straighter as the clinician in her takes over, her natural reaction to a person processing major medical news.

 

“It’s still really early, probably about six weeks,” she explains. “So it’s really not a _sure_ sure thing yet. The ultrasound will tell if it’s viable—we have to check to see if it’s in the right place, see if there’s a heartbeat. And even if it is viable, a lot of things can happen this early on.”

 

He stares at her silently for a moment, studying her. “But it could be fine,” he eventually replies. “The chances are it’s fine, right? You’re young, and healthy.”

 

She pauses, surprised by his question. “I guess the odds are that everything’s fine. I hadn’t really… I’m just used to preparing for the worst.”

 

“And what if it’s not the worst?” Bellamy asks.

 

Clarke feels her breath coming faster as her anxiety rises again. “What do you mean? Even if everything’s medically fine this is a major, potentially catastrophic life change!”

 

“Potentially catastrophic?” he asks, incredulous. “Clarke, not everything has to be a disaster.”

 

“Look at us! Look at the world we live in!” she bursts, letting out all the fears that have building since Jackson broke the news. “You know how dangerous it still is, even when things are peaceful. And bringing a baby into this world, keeping that baby alive… There’s just so much that could go wrong. And us! We’ve been together for what—two months? And now this? This wasn’t supposed to happen, Bellamy!”

 

He can’t seem to find the words to reply, which makes sense. She went through her period of shock earlier, he’s going to need some time for it all to sink in.

 

“I know it’s a lot,” she says. “I’m still processing it. You should go for a walk or something. I literally ran for the hills when I found out and went up to the lookout so I could deal with this.”

 

“But you’re not feeling well,” he protests after a moment. “I should stay and take care of you.”

 

“I’ll be fine,” she replies. “It’s a normal part of it.”

 

He considers her for a moment, and she can see how frustrated he is. “Is there anything I can do right now?” he finally asks.

 

“I just want to go back to sleep,” she replies. “Can we do the serious talk in the morning?”

 

He sighs. “Fine.”

 

“If you need to feel like you’re doing something, think about what you want. We have to figure this out. In the morning.”

 

He nods and gets up from the bed. Once he’s standing, he looks down at her for a moment, and it’s one of the rare times he’s hard for her to read. He leans down to kiss her briefly on the tangle of her hair before turning and leaving the cabin.

 

Clarke takes a deep breath before lying back down and pulling the covers up to her chin, praying that the exhaustion takes over her racing mind and sleep returns sooner rather than later.

 

**

 

Bellamy walks out of Clarke's cabin into the cold night air and immediately stumbles on a stray rock, causing him to curse under his breath. It's a relief to have something to direct some frustration towards, because his mind and body are currently in overdrive, processing the bomb that's just been dropped on him.

 

It's a funny metaphor to use—dropping of bombs—because here they are, trying to make a life on a planet that bombs nearly destroyed over a century before. Bellamy has dealt with a lot of shit down here. Hell, he dealt with a lot of shit when he was still on the Ark, too. His life has never been easy, and he thought he was pretty good at dealing with the unexpected.

 

But this? The creation of a new life? A child? This is one thing he never thought he'd be dealing with, at least not until very recently. It was certainly something he never thought about on the Ark, where his mother had shown him that parenthood was mostly a tragedy, and not during their early years on Earth, when keeping himself and his people alive for another day had been all that mattered. 

 

He decides to take Clarke's advice and go for a walk, because he doesn't want to be around other people right now, as good as a drink at the bar would taste. Clarke. _Jesus_. She'd basically kicked him out, which isn't the most surprising thing in the world, given her track record of reacting to difficult situations by closing herself off. But he wishes, not for the first time, that she would give him more of a chance to support her. Especially now.

 

A baby. She'd been so worked up, so worried, talking in her doctor voice and, like she said, planning for the worst. Pregnancy and childbirth on the ground are no joke, he knows that. They’ve lost women, babies, children. There are plenty of risks involved, plenty of things that could happen. But he also doesn't think that this has to be the worst. 

 

A part of him actually thinks this could be the best. 

 

It’s a different world now than when he’d been on the Ark, and different from those early days on the ground, and while he’s scared that he has no idea how to be a _good_ parent, the fact that he can entertain the possibility of being a parent _at all_ is a sign of how things have changed. A smile tugs at his face again as he makes his way to a quiet corner of the village, the idea of a baby—his and Clarke's baby—formulating images in his head. There's a tiny baby, and then a toddler, and then a kid running around... And the two of them together, raising it. It's beautiful and it's terrifying, the sheer potential of it all.

 

He finds a tree to sit against and stare out at the night sky. He gets Clarke's fears about the viability of the pregnancy and other health-related issues, and the general risks of life on the ground. That's something every couple dealing with this situation would be facing. But Clarke had cited the short time they've been together as one of the reasons this has to be difficult. And that makes his heart hurt.

 

Because while they may have only been sleeping together for two months, what they have between them spans years of experience and love. Is it ideal in terms of timing? No. They’re at the beginning of a romantic relationship. They haven't talked about kids, just like they haven't talked about a lot of the bigger, scarier aspects of being together, in spite of how close they are. They’d seen each other’s vulnerabilities stripped bare early on, at the base of a tree not unlike the one he's sitting against now. But that doesn’t mean they actually communicate well about everything.

 

It's been tricky, transitioning into this new phase of their relationship, learning how talk about their feelings for each other, and their feelings about who they are together, and where they're going. They'd had to face this the morning after the solstice party when they'd woken up in a haze and had to confront what has happened. It had been a difficult conversation at first, before they'd broken through the hang-ups they each clearly had when it came to being with another person and managed to admit that they wanted to be together.

 

The serious relationships either of them had in the past had ended in death and destruction, and the damage from those experiences lingers enough that forging something new, even with each other, is scary. Bellamy knows Clarke is especially wary, and he's tried to give her space as they move into this new thing between them, because part of him is still scared she might run away from it. 

 

They were supposed to have time to grow into this. After years of working to make a world where their people have the chance to enjoy the good things in life, it was finally their turn to experience something good for themselves. Bellamy wanted time to do this right, because it's Clarke. They'd endured some teasing on the part of their friends when they'd gotten together, with more than one person joking about "what took you so long?" And yeah, they'd been close for years, and he'd had feelings for her for years. But this wasn't something to be rushed. As far as he was concerned, as hard as it had been at times to be patient, they were doing things on the timeline that was right for _them_.

 

Well, that timeline has ideas of its own, apparently. Bellamy lets the shock and wonder run wash over him again at the thought of a baby. He knows Clarke is scared. He's scared too. But he also knows deep down that he wants this. He wants this future with her, the chance to have a family with her. He wanted it before this surprise came along, he just figured, if it happened, it would happen years in the future. 

 

He stares at the stars for a while, the crisp night air barely registering as everything continues to sink in. He’s not really sure what to do next, he only knows that he wants to be close to her, even though she’d pushed him away. Clarke pushes people away sometimes, it’s in her nature, so he doesn’t take this too personally, even though she’s pushing in the _most_ _personal_ of situations. He’s learned that sometimes, after giving her space, what she needs most is pushback.

 

He’s been out there for more than an hour by the time gets up and shakes out his legs. He heads back toward the more populated part of the village, where things have quieted substantially, and makes his way to Clarke’s cabin. He lets himself inside quietly and finds her sound asleep. They’ve rarely slept apart since they got together, but the past few days have been an exception. She’s been so tired, and not feeling well, and now he knows why. His heart swells as he yearns to make this easier for her. Tonight, he wants to sleep near her again.

 

He hangs his jacket on a peg by the door next to hers, takes off his boots, and strips down to his boxers, leaving his clothes on a chair. Clarke is in the middle of her bed, and he lifts the covers to crawl under, causing her to stir as he slides in next to her.

 

“Bellamy?” she whispers sleepily.

 

“Hey,” he says softly as he pulls her gently back against him, his hand finding hers and giving it a squeeze.

 

“You came back,” she says as she snuggles into him, clutching his hand, and his body releases the tension he’s been holding.

 

“I didn’t want to be away from you,” he says, breathing in the scent of her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

 

She pulls his hand and arm more tightly against her chest and then relaxes as she lets out a long sigh, drifting back under. The circumstances of the universe swirling around them seem to still as his heart beats against her back, and he soon follows her into sleep.

 

He wakes early the next morning when he feels Clarke moving next to him. He loves waking up with her, the slowness of the dawn a time for them to be together before the madness of the day rushes in. He's on his back, and Clarke has woken with her arm flung across his chest. She begins to pull herself closer, and then she freezes, shaking him out of the haze of waking to remember the enormity of the situation they're dealing with. 

 

"Hey," he says in a sleep-roughened voice, running a hand across her back in a comforting gesture. "You doing okay?"

 

Clarke unfreezes and sighs. "Yeah. I just forgot about everything and then remembered when I woke up." To his relief, she relaxes and leans against her pillow, her fingers curling against his chest. "How are you doing?"

 

"I'm good," he says. "I mean, I'm still kind of in shock, but you were right. It helped to get out and think last night."

 

"Sorry I was such a grouch," she says. "I've been feeling really sick in the evenings."

 

"I thought that was supposed to happen in the mornings," he says.

 

Clarke lets out a small chuckle. "So did I."

 

Bellamy reaches out and touches his finger to her temple. "How are you feeling in here?"

 

"Okay, I guess? Better than last night." Her eyes look between his for a moment and then she says, "I'm really glad you're here."

 

"Where else would I be?" he asks.

 

"I don't know," she says. "I dropped some pretty major news on you and then told you to leave. I wouldn't have been surprised if you wanted to stay away last night."

 

He feels a gentle smile crawl across his face. "Okay, first of all, I'm always going to come back to you, even when you're grouchy and tell me to leave. And second, after what you told me, I don't think I ever want to sleep apart from you again if I can help it."

 

Her eyes soften and her lip trembles slightly. "How are you like this?"

 

"Like what?"

 

"So good to me all the time, even when I'm the worst to you." 

 

She's teased him with this question before, but she's serious right now, and he knows it's something she truly ponders, part of the guilt she can't let go of. This is venturing into territory they tend to avoid talking about when it comes to their relationship. 

 

"You're not the worst to me," he says. "You're stubborn as hell, and you drive me crazy sometimes, but you're not the worst. You're you. As far as I'm concerned you're the best thing to happen to me since we landed on this damned planet."

 

Clarke blushes and looks down, but she can't hide the smile creeping across her face.

 

"You're just saying that because I'm a pathetic mess right now," she protests.

 

"Stop that," he says, tilting her face back up so she's looking at him again. "You're not a pathetic mess. You're beautiful. And dammit, Clarke, I know we don't talk much about this stuff, but I love you, so _fucking_ much, and I'm an idiot for not telling you that every day."

 

Her eyes make the shape that indicate tears are on the way, but nothing spills over yet. 

 

"I love you too," she says. “I just thought we’d have more time to figure out how to be together before anything like this ever happened.”

 

“Hey,” he says, his fingers tracing the edge of her face. “We can do this. We can figure this out.”

 

Clarke blinks back the tears, but one escapes. “It’s just so _much._ Just when we thought things had slowed down enough that we could try to live like normal people, my implant fails.”

 

“I don’t think you and I will ever be normal,” he says, his thumb brushing at the dampness on her cheek. “And the timing of this, it’s not ideal, but… I need you to know, whatever you want to do, I respect you and I support you. No matter what.”

 

The tears flow more now and he wants to pull her into his arms and hold her fiercely until she feels better, but he knows he still has some things to get out.

 

“You told me to think about what I want,” he continues. “I want a real future with you. I’ve wanted that for a long time. So having a baby with you, that’s where I wanted to end up with you anyway, before this happened.”

 

“Really?” she asks.

 

“Really,” he replies.

 

She moves then, pulling herself forward until she’s against his chest, her face buried in his neck, and he wraps his arm around to bring her as close as he can.

 

After a moment she turns her head so she can speak. “I never learned how to think that far ahead with another person,” she says. “I’m still learning, with you. You make me think it’s possible, though.”

 

“It’s scary,” Bellamy says. “But it’s also the way to build a life here. You’re my partner, Clarke, in so many things, and this, I can’t imagine doing this with anyone else but you.”

 

She moves back again so she can meet his gaze. “You think we can do this?”

 

“I think it’ll be hard, probably harder in some ways than anything we’ve ever done together. But I think it could be beautiful, too. I think it could be the best thing we ever do.”

 

She leans in then and kisses him, hard, and he meets her in it, and for a moment the big stuff fades into the background.

 

“I think it could be beautiful too,” she says when she pulls back, cheeks wet. “God, I can’t believe I’m crying this much, my hormones are a mess already. I’m not sad, I’m just, it’s a lot, all of this.”

 

“I know it is,” he replies.

 

Clarke lets out a breath, and a small smile pulls at her cheeks. “Okay. We’re doing this?”

 

Bellamy’s heart leaps. “I’m in if you are.”

 

“Yes. Okay,” she says, the acceptance of the situation bringing new clarity to her expression. He can tell the moment that planning mode kicks in. “If we’re going to do this, the first thing we need to do is get that ultrasound, figure out where things stand. I can grab Jackson at breakfast and make it happen before he starts seeing patients for the day.”

 

“Can I come?” he asks.

 

“You want to?” she asks, surprised.

 

“Yeah, I mean, if it’s okay with you. If you’d rather be alone—“

 

“No! I want you there. Whatever we end up seeing, having you there will make it easier.”

 

“Then I’ll let my team know I’m coming on shift a little late,” he says. He grabs her wrist to check the time on her watch. “We should probably get up anyway.”

 

They get out of bed and get dressed, and head for the mess hall where they find Jackson having a bowl of oatmeal. Clarke fills him in on the plan, and after they wolf down a quick breakfast, they meet Jackson in medical in the room where they keep the portable ultrasound machine they’d salvaged from Mount Weather years ago before the explosion.

 

“You know the drill, Clarke,” Jackson says as he gets the machine started up.

 

She gets onto the examining table and lies back, pulling up her shirt and pushing her pants down low so Jackson can reach the right area. Bellamy is fascinated by it already, because even though he’d been around while his mom was pregnant with Octavia, there had been no proper medical care involved. In fact, very little about his experience with Octavia has prepared him for this, and he figures he’s going to be learning _a lot_ from here on out.

 

“When was your last menstrual period, Clarke?” Jackson asks.

 

“It ended December 30th,” Clarke says.

 

Jackson’s face is thoughtful as he runs some numbers in his head. “So you’re probably around the six week mark, give or take.”

 

A field of gray blobs appears on the screen as he touches the instrument to Clarke’s lower abdomen. Clarke laughs at the expression on Bellamy’s face as he tries to decipher what he’s looking at.

 

“It takes forever to learn how to read this thing,” she says. “Believe it or not, that’s my insides.”

 

“It’ll be pretty small at this point, so it’ll probably take a moment to find it,” Jackson says.

 

The room falls quiet, and Bellamy notices Clarke’s face is focused on the screen as Jackson works, sees the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes herself into calmness. The images on the screen make no sense to him, so he watches her instead of the screen, and he sees the moment her breath catches and her eyes open wide.

 

“There it is,” Jackson says.

 

Bellamy turns to look at the screen, and it’s still a bunch of grey and black, but in the middle he sees a little round shape with a tiny flickering inside it.

 

“Oh my god,” Clarke says, reaching for his hand and gripping hard. When she looks over at Bellamy, she can’t keep the smile off her face. “It’s so tiny right now, but that little blinking thing in the middle is its heart.”

 

“Holy shit,” Bellamy says as he stares at it, and he’s swamped with emotion because this just got _real._

 

“The size looks like six weeks,” Jackson says. “Everything appears normal at this point. We’ll want to remove your implant device, Clarke, in case there are any lingering hormones in there. Other than that we just need to run the standard prenatal bloodwork, and monitor how things go. Congratulations, guys.”

 

“Thanks,” Bellamy says, staring in wonder at Clarke.

 

“I’ll give you guys some time,” Jackson says, heading for the door.

 

“I can’t believe we made a thing with a heartbeat,” Bellamy says. “I need to sit down.”

 

Clarke laughs at him again as she zips her pants back up. “I know, it’s pretty overwhelming.”

 

He sits in a chair close enough to her that he can reach for her hand again with both of his, something to hold onto like a lifeline.

 

“What happens next?” he asks.

 

“Besides continuing to freak out at the fact that this is happening? Not much, besides waiting. I’m trying to remind myself that people have been doing this since the dawn of humanity.”

 

“I guess they have,” he replies. “I can still hardly believe it’s real.”

 

“Me either,” she says. “We should probably keep it quiet until things are a little farther along. But we can tell Octavia, if you want.”

 

“Her reaction is guaranteed to be priceless,” Bellamy says. “Let’s tell her in a few days, after we’ve had more time for it to sink in.”

 

“Good idea,” she says.

 

“How are we supposed to just go do normal stuff now?”

 

Clarke shrugs. “Like I said, somehow people have been doing this for millennia.”

 

She gets off the table and stands between his knees, reaching to stroke his hair before pulling him in to her. He rests his head against her upper stomach as his arms go around her waist, and he tries to imagine how her body will change in the coming months, but it’s hard because she still looks and feels like her normal self.

 

“I hope you don’t have too much detail-oriented work to focus on today,” she says, her fingers still moving through his hair.

 

“Just a regular watch,” he says, and he’s thankful for that because he knows his mind will be in the clouds.

 

“I have to finish up medicinal plant inventory and plan the early spring gathering trip,” Clarke groans.

 

“Are you going to tell your mom?” he asks.

 

Clarke sighs. “Eventually. For now, I like that it’s just us who know. Well, Jackson too, but he’ll keep his mouth shut.”

 

“It’s a pretty big secret,” Bellamy says. “But a good one.”

 

“Are you happy?” she asks quietly.

 

“Yeah,” he replies. “I’m like a new level of happy I didn’t even know existed. Mixed with being scared shitless.”

 

Clarke laughs again and he squeezes her before backing away so he can see her face.

 

“Are you happy?” he asks.

 

A smile crosses her face, one he’s never seen on her before. “Yeah,” she says. “And terrified. I think I’m pretty much in the same boat as you right now.”

 

He stands up and leans in to kiss her cheek, then her lips.

 

“We’ve got this,” he says softly as he pulls away.

 

“Thank you,” she says back.

 

“For what?” he asks.

 

“For being you.”

 

He kisses her again, and after that, he really does need to head off to his shift, and she really does need to get her inventory done. They walk back out into the real world, hand in hand until he has to leave her at the door to medical. Once he’s outside, everything around him seems little brighter than normal, a little more full of possibility.

 

He has to fight to keep the stupid grin off his face. He suspects he’ll be doing that a lot today.

 

_The End_

 

 

 


End file.
